La leggenda edessena sulla conversione al cristianesimo del re Abgar: manichei e cristiani in polemica dottrinale, tra competizione sull’autorità e riscritture della memoria nella Mesopotamia di III e IV secolo

Although Edessa is the city traditionally credited with the birth of Aramaic Christianity, unlike other major centers of ancient Christianity, we have no reliable information about its Christianization until the 2nd and especially the 3rd century, when a dialectic between different religious confessions emerged, in which Marcionites, Bardesanites, Manichaeans and Orthodox debated doctrinal questions and competed for the evangelization of the city. For this reason, when Episcopal orthodoxy imposed itself in the 4th century, texts such as the Doctrina Addai and the Refutations of Ephrem attempted to rewrite the historical memory of the city by erasing or marginalizing its ‘heretical’ past, in favor of an Orthodox foundation or identity of the city. And yet, this very censorship operation can provide modern historians with information about the past that they wanted to marginalize, especially when some themes addressed by Orthodox sources find a counterpart in contemporary ‘heretical’ sources. The aim of this paper will therefore be to deconstruct the legend of the Christianization of Edessa as a rewriting and manipulation of the historical memory of the city, and from this to attempt to reconstruct the actual historical conflict between Christians and manichaeans, in the light of evident parallels on important doctrinal themes with the Manichaean literary tradition, and in particular with the texts of the CMC, belonging to the same historical and geographical context.